Brawl Stars racks up £322m gross revenue in its debut year

Supercell’s Brawl Stars has generated around $422 million (£322m) in gross revenue in its first year following an 18-month soft-launch that kicked off in June 2017.

In a new report by mobile trend analysts Sensor Tower Intelligence, this makes Brawl Stars Supercell’s biggest revenue generator in Asia, above Clash of Clans and Clash Royale, although South Korea is the most lucrative market for the game, with players contributing 22 per cent of the game’s total revenue, around $94million (£71.7m). The US was the title’s second lucrative market, generating $73 million (17 per cent), and Germany ranks third with $35 million, or 8 per cent. 

Overall, Brawl Stars has racked up 141 million unique installs globally to date, although the game is most popular in Brazil, accounting for nearly 14 million downloads. Google Play accounted for $242 million of user spending or 57 per cent of total revenue.

“While on a global level Brawl Stars ranked No. 3 over the past year for revenue in Supercell’s portfolio behind Clash of Clans and Clash Royale, the shooter was No. 1 for user spending in Asia,” Sensor Tower said. “Brawl Stars generated $143 million in the region in the year since launch, representing 38 per cent of Supercell’s earnings in Asia. Clash of Clans was No. 2 with $111 million, or approximately 30 per cent of revenue, while Clash Royale was No. 3 with $989 million, or 26 per cent.”

A recent report into the mobile gaming market, also by Sensor Tower, discovered 82 per cent of the 29.6 billion new app downloads in Q3 2019 new installs are generated by just 1 per cent of app publishers. This means 99 per cent of games publishers share just 20 per cent of the market, with 6 billion downloads combined.

The report also determined the top 1 per cent of games generated 93 per cent of all spending, and 95% of mobile game revenue.

“There were more than 3.4 million apps available globally across the App Store and Google Play in 2018, an increase of 65 per cent from the 2.2 million apps available in 2014,” the report said. “However, the percentage of apps that have been downloaded at least 1,000 times has decreased over the same period, from 30 per cent in 2014 to 26 per cent in 2018. In other words, in a continually growing market where most publishers are competing against the publishers controlling 80 per cent of all new user acquisition, standing out among the competition is more crucial than ever.”